Over fifty years ago, Judy Holliday won the Best Actress Oscar in this
comic fable, confounding her competition, Bette Davis in All About
Eve
and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. She plays Billie Dawn,
the unruly mistress of millionaire junk dealer Harry Brock. Afraid she'll
embarrass him in front of the congressman he is planning to bribe, Harry
hires a tweedy tutor (William Holden) to smooth her rough
edges.Of course, everyone
gets the education they deserve.

Comedy heroines can get away with plenty that dramatic heroines cannot.
But, unlike the madcap heiresses of 1930s screwball comedy, the wacky
behavior of the 1950s dumb blonde is linked to dimness, rather than a
liberating eccentricity. Holliday was a comedienne of shrewd intelligence
and exuberant talent. Her not-so-dumb blondes enjoy a superior detachment
from the world and were a model for the slightly later comic characters
of Marilyn
Monroe.

Holliday's Oscar win is considered one of the great upsets in Academy Award
history. From a modern point of view, it does not seem at all odd that
two
flamboyant "older" actresses, playing aggressive, sexually voracious women
with younger lovers, were rejected in favor of a pretty actress validating
the 1950s status quo.

Garson Kanin wrote the play, Born Yesterday for Jean Arthur,
who dropped out right before opening night. Judy Holliday learned the
role in
3 days, and played it on Broadway for 4 years, opposite Paul Douglas.
In the play, Harry, the millionaire junk dealer, was a more sympathetic
character, and the young reporter was a bit of a stuffed shirt. Broderick
Crawford specialized in boorish characters, and was cast in the film
because he had won an Oscar the year before for All the King's
Men.
He is not much of a romantic rival for William Holden's
Paul Verrall. Holden had been groomed for stardom much earlier, in
1939, after playing
the title role in Golden Boy. He'd spent over a decade playing
bland leading men, and after his WWII service, he restarted his career.
Holden's
cynical outlook and slightly used pretty boy looks are shown to great
advantage
in this film, and even more memorably in Sunset Boulevard in the
year 1950.

Holliday also had a false start in films. As a member of the comedy group,
The Revuers,
with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, she was hired to appear in a Carmen
Miranda movie called Greenwich Village. The Revuers act was cut
out of the film, but they can still be glimpsed as extras. One of their
nightclub
routines was a satire of the early days of talking pictures, which Comden
and Green expanded into the brilliant musical Singing in the Rain.
In the film, Jean Hagen closely modeled her performance of the screeching
diva Lina Lamont on Holliday's
performance in the nightclub skit.

Harry Cohn of Columbia paid $1 million for the play Born Yesterday intending
to star his hottest property, Rita Hayworth. He was forced to shelve
the project after her marriage to Aly Kahn. Cohn, a famously vulgar
and abusive film mogul, did not want Holliday "that
fat Jewish broad" in the
part. Director George Cukor shrewdly showcased Holliday in a pivotal part
in the
Katharine Hepburn--Spencer Tracy film Adam's
Rib and
he relented. Holliday was glamourized in classic Hollywood style, with
13 elaborate
outfits by designer Jean Louis. She said later, "
I love to cook and I love to eat what I've
cooked. But when I was doing Born Yesterday for Columbia, I had
to diet for months. I had to show up at the studio 2 hours before they
started
shooting. From 7-8, they worked on my hair. From 8-9, they worked on my
face. And, they bleached me every other day." Judy
Holliday only made 6 other films. She was called before the House on
UnAmerican Activities Committee right after
making this film. She mystified the questioners who accused her of Communist
activities by answering in the voice and illogical logic of her Born
Yesterday character,
Billie Dawn.
She wasn't officially
blacklisted by the HUAC, but her refusal to cooperate cost her at least
part of her
career. She was a good businesswoman and became rich, but died of breast
cancer in 1965 at the age of 43. No grand mystique clung to her after
her death,
as it so often does to movie stars who die prematurely.

In Born Yesterday, Harry's
junk business represents the abuses of capitalism, which must be reformed
by the ideals
of democracy. This is symbolized by the 1950s agenda of taming Billie's
comically rowdy behavior and indoctrinate her with a little middle class
virtue and restraint, especially sexual restraint. In many films, hero
or heroine are transformed when they take off their glasses. In Born
Yesterday Billie puts her glasses on.